Yemen Monitor / Monitoring Unit / Exclusive:
The killing of the head of the Houthi government in Sanaa, Ahmed Ghaleb Al-Rahwi, along with several ministers in last Thursday’s Israeli strike, has sparked widespread reactions on social media platforms in Yemen.
Yemen’s Ambassador to UNESCO, Mohammed Jumeih, questioned how Israel was able to penetrate the Houthis’ ranks, while the resistance in Gaza had withstood nearly two years without being infiltrated.
Jumaih believes that a “real resistance” with a strong faith and a goal of liberating land is difficult to penetrate, whereas a “profitable resistance” that aims for political and public gain can be easily infiltrated.
Activist Ali al-ANesi shares this view and questioned what comes next after the targeting of the Sana’a government ministers. He noted that Israel followed two tracks to target Sana’a: first, targeting supply chains, and second, intelligence work through recruitment and co-opting technology.
Al-ANesi added that Israel exploited security and technical loopholes to identify political command centers, represented by the government, and will continue exploiting these gaps to reach manufacturing sites and military command-and-control centers.
For his part, journalist Adnan Al-Jabirni said the level of Houthi confusion following Thursday’s strike is greater than expected, and it seems that the group’s intensified exceptional arrangements and entanglements have driven it away from certainty on many matters and files.
Journalist Saif Al-Hadheri noted that the strike inflicted unprecedented disarray and losses on the Houthi militia, with costly repercussions, as the state of unrest and security anxiety will rise to an unprecedented level.
Al-Hadheri believes the strike will make every government, security, or military official a direct target, and will render every neighborhood or street where a Houthi official resides in constant danger and under the threat of being struck at any moment.
Regionally, it has become clear that the battle between the Iranian occupation project and the Israeli occupation project is no longer confined to Palestine, but has extended into arenas penetrated by Iran, including Yemen.
Observers believe these consequences place a heavy responsibility on the leadership of the legitimate government to capitalize on the state of confusion within Houthi ranks in Sanaa and other provinces. Failure to seize this opportunity, they warn, would leave the army and resistance leadership inside Yemen fully accountable.
